Field of the Disclosure
The present invention relates in general to abrasive wheels and, in particular, to a system, method and apparatus for a thin wheel that is reinforced by chopped fiber.
Description of the Related Art
The bursting speed and side load of thin cutting and grinding wheels are enhanced when sufficient continuous fiber reinforcements (fabric webs, in practice) are included. By sufficient continuous fiber reinforcement, the toughness of the thin wheel is greatly increased since microscopically, before the rupture of the fabric, multiple cracking in the matrix dissipates the energy. It is more difficult to toughen brittle materials with randomly distributed short fibers than with continuous fibers. In the case of randomly distributed chopped fibers bridging an existing crack, some portion of the fibers do not cross the crack flank and some portions of the fibers, due to small embedded length, pull out at small crack opening displacements. Therefore, the crack bridging force of the randomly distributed fiber is greatly reduced and is problematic. Thus, improvements in thin wheel construction continue to be of interest.